Have you ever had ‘the Giving Up Thought’? You know, that thought where you have been chasing your dreams forever and you get deflated like a popped balloon for some reason and just want to give up and forget that you ever wanted more from your life?
The ‘Giving Up Thought’ makes you want to go back to a life where you knew jack shit about big dreams and you didn’t want to challenge yourself and you were happy.
Yeah…because those days were so much better, right? Knowing there was more to life, wondering if this was it and bouncing off the bars of your life? HA.
I had the ‘Giving Up Thought’ this week. I was doing a task I haven’t done in…er…a long time (there was a 14 at the end of the date!) – and this task is boring and with a year’s worth of stuff to work with, kind of depressing. After an hour of it, I was totally disillusioned and thinking I should just Give Up. But I know the Giving Up Thought well – it’s been a regular visitor to my life ever since I started doing things worth giving up on.
Here are 3 things you should know about the Giving Up Thought:
1. It’s just a thought – it’s not an instruction or a fact or a sign to give up…it’s just a thought.
2. It passes (and comes back, infuriatingly)
3. It’s usually a symptom of a different problem – lack of self-care, a better way of doing things, a sign to get away from your desk/task and lighten up.
How to deal with the ‘Giving Up Thought’ (hereafter referred to as the g’up thought)
1. Check your self-care. When you’re not feeling cared for, life is harder and the g’up thought has an e-z-pass to your subconscious. If your self care is low, you may find that once you’ve taken some care of you, the thought just disappears.
2. Don’t take it too seriously (yet). G’up thoughts have the power you give them. So don’t give them any. They will exaggerate and distort and misrepresent the facts, telling you that you suck and no-one cares about your creations and there’s no point. Don’t believe a word of it.
Note: the g’up thought is different to a knowing that you need to make a change – if the g’up thought is related to a deeper knowing, then you might want to give it more consideration, which leads to…
3. Go inside for answers – meditate, journal, explore the feeling – what does your heart say about the g’up thought? What does your soul say? Don’t take the thought at face value, shine some inner wisdom light on it.
4. Lighten up. The g’up thought has heavy, tired, slow, low, dark energy…so go have a laugh. This isn’t about ignoring a problem, this is about changing the energy so you can see if there really is a problem.
5. Ask for help – get your Dream Team and Spiritual Team on board. Ask for help from people who know about the g’up thought (anyone who’s chased a big dream will have had it). Ask for help from Gods, Goddesses, Guardian Angels, Guides, whatever spiritual assistance you have in your corner.
I asked my spiritual team for help today (all 4G’s above…get them all involved, I say!) – I asked for a reframe, help, encouragement. What I got was “You wanted a subject for today’s newsletter, here it is. Write about it”. I did not like this answer to begin with, but now I’m writing about it, I can feel that g’up energy lifting. My spiritual team know better than I do, but only always. I also got an idea to make the task that set this g’up episode off much easier.
6. Move. Get away from where you’re slumping in the g’up thought and move your body – do yoga, dance, stretch, run up and down the stairs. Change your location and physiology.
7. Take off the rose-coloured glasses. The time ‘before’ big dreams is not usually a magical, wonderful time. Often, it’s a time of longing, of feeling trapped, of disillusionment, of the pain of remaining closed in the bud and desperately wanting to bloom. So something is a bit sucky now…it’s probably not bad enough to send you ‘back’ to your old life.
8. Wait it out. If all else fails, the g’up thought will pass eventually. I’ve been in business nearly 12 years. I’ve had the g’up thought approximately 283 times. It has always passed, and that doesn’t include the times I wanted to give up on my books and programs!
So, for today, I’m not going to give up. I might tomorrow. I can if I want. I probably won’t though…and I hope you don’t either. Big Dreams can sometimes be tough, but they’re worth persisting with.
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